Robot ‘quadrocopters’ play a real life game of Pong

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Researchers in Switzerland have designed small, remote control “quadrocopters” capable of seeing and reacting fast enough to bounce a ball back and forth. Equipped with a tennis racket on top of them, the duo bounces the ball around a netted-off section of a Swiss building. Both units are controlled by humans, but could theoretically be programmed as well. Unfortunately, no program is fast enough to play pong in real life, yet.

The quadrocopters are capable of synchronized choreography, acrobatic tricks, and extremely precise movements. They were developed by the Switzerland Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (via Crave). Check out this second video to learn more about the copters and the arena built to house them. If you’d like to see more crazy robots, check out these crawling robots that can rebuild themselves.

It’s good to know that after robots take over the world, at least they’ll know how to have a little fun as they fly around our decimated world.